Full Body Scanners are Not as Private as We Were Previously Told

When people began expressing their concern about full body scanners in airports showing more of their bodies than they were comfortable with, officials reassured them that these images were just viewed by one member of airport security personnel and then immediately deleted. That just didn’t sound right to me. Why employ these full body scanners if the images could not be accessed at a later date? What if there is something suspicious about a passenger who is trying to board a flight? What if a passenger gets on board and then behaves suspiciously and causes trouble? Wouldn’t our counter terrorism officials need a copy of his or her full body scan to reexamine for proof of explosive devices? And how could they get those copies if they were immediately deleted? As far as I was concerned if these scanners really did delete the images, then they weren’t as useful as they should be. And if they didn’t delete them automatically but saved them, then US officials were not being forthcoming. Either way, something didn’t feel right.

Most people are not as uninhibited as Mr. Khan and would be mortified and humiliated if a printout of their naked bodies had been passed out among the security staff and used as a source of amusement. If the security personnel have access to email, passengers’s images, particularly those belonging to the famous as well as the infamous, can be sent all over the world. The abuses and violations of privacy would be unprecedented. If we hear stories of full body scan images of private citizens being printed off and passed around, it could do great damage to the airline industry as people stop flying and instead drive to where they need to go, if they can.

Update: Reader Jerry emails:

Of course the original scans probably are deleted immediately after inspection, right after being saved elsewhere and printed. If it works like most computers the file really isn’t gone, only the file name is deleted and the space marked as free. Any file recovery application can probably get it back

As a side note, did you know that these scans can be pasted into MS Paint, color inverted and look almost ‘normal’? I was totally surprised at the results when I experimented with this. No wonder the UK is in such a snit over scanning children.